Semiotics

Semiotics is the theory of how communication occurs, requiring signs or icons that are organized into a textual context such as a musical score and understood via nomenclature or code. The theory also is known as “semiology” and “semiotic studies” as espoused by the Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) and the American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). People presume music's signatory power, considering it capable of communicating values, power relationships, gender, and ideologies. There are two ways in which signs make their entry into music. One way is unplanned, and results from the image-forming disposition of the human psyche. It is not in human nature to generate meaningless images. The meanings may be fragmentary or coherent, trivial or significant, but something will well up even in the most unpromising material, and far more interestingly when the material is shaped by a superior intellect and a keen vision: by genius. A composer may not know why he writes a musical work in a specific manner, but he knows how the music manifests itself. The second way in which signs make their way into music is planned, with the signs largely conscious, contrived, and deliberate. In such cases, the composer is aware of both how and why the signs enhance the meaning of the musical composition.

Semiosis, focusing on paralinguistics and kinesics, draws together cultural anthropology, education, linguistics, psychiatry, and psychology. Because most ancient, medieval, and renaissance music was vocal, it was logical that theorists and composers would create analogies between the composition of music and the composition of oration and poetry. Thus, the term musica poetica. Analogies were made on several levels: structurally, dividing a work into sections (exordium, medium, and finis); and grammatically, by focusing on speech patterns. Most important, special melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, or technical devices in music came to be affiliated with figures of classical oration. The use of repetition, imitation, sequence, and ornamentation are common. Understanding the fundamentals of rhetoric, musica poetica, and semiotics can greatly enhance one's appreciation and understanding of 16th and 17th century musical works.